Wednesday, March 29, 2017

French Painting at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

Glyptotek, Copenhagaen

From 19th March, 2017

Manet, Degas, Monet, Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin… the Glyptotek’s
collection of French painting contains works by some of the greatest
figures in art, just as it covers one of the most hectic epochs in art
history. With over 200 works the exhibition displays the artistic
diversity, which poured forth from France in the years 1809-1950.
Through an original presentation of famous masterpieces and rarely seen
major works the exhibition presents a visual narrative of 150 years of
art which never manages to put down roots, and, for the same reason, is
suffused with intensity and invention.

The Art Superpower

From the Romantic Period up to
the Second World War France was the meeting point for the most
innovative vanguard of artists. The accelerating modernity and cultural
broad-mindedness of Paris as well as the attraction of rural settings in
the provinces was the perfect climate for the most pioneering European
avant-garde. The exhibition’s paintings, drawings and small sculptures
bear witness to the fact that art in this period was, at times, a savage
quest for originality. These artists were driven by a powerful impulse
not merely to keep pace with, but also to be able to anticipate and
create the expression and form of the time.

Ideal and Experiment

The exhibition, which is
based exclusively on the Glyptotek’s own collection, spans the whole
range in the development of art from the academic to the so-called
modern. From the idealised painterly expression with its considerable
technical wealth of detail, via the freer, experimental paintings, to
full-blooded abstraction. In this way the exhibition sums up the many
stylistic currents of the period: Realism, Romanticism, Naturalism, and,
most of all, Impressionism.

Backwards: 1950-1809

However, the development is
far from linear and the art has a tendency to run rings around itself.
The artists typically worked outside art historical categories. They
moved in and out of the various groups, drew inspiration from their
travels and, all in all, worked more dynamically and unpredictably.

The exhibition extends over three floors and juxtaposes artists,
genres and techniques with chronology as the governing principle. It is,
in fact, the chronology which briefly liberates painting from the
constraints of being too closely associated with certain styles and has
it assume the foreground as painting first and foremost. To further
underline the free approach of the artists the exhibition is arranged
according to a reverse chronology. Far from standing as a natural final
destination, the modern painting of the 20th century becomes an
introduction to a reversed stroll through the art of painting from the
19th century.